LIFE HISTORY AND SEASONAL PREVALENCE 139 



exposure. The CiiUces sit humped up, with the ahdomeii 

 drooping, or at most horizontal, and the proboscis held out 

 in front of them, so that even when they are looking at the 

 surface on which they are standing, it is at least kept off the 

 ground. The palpi are kept arched backwards and upwards, 

 and usually slightly separated from the proboscis, and the 

 antennae usually sloped well behind its line. In Anopheles, 

 on the other hand, there is a strong tendency to keep all the 

 appendages of the head in the same plane, and in both sexes, 

 the four basal joints of the palpi are kept closely held against 

 the proboscis. In the female the whole organ is so held, 

 but the clubbed terminal joints of those of the males are 

 kept spread out at an angle of about 45 degrees. On this 

 account the trunk of this genus of gnat looks almost as 

 thick as the rest of the body. In addition to this, instead of 

 bunching themselves up as the Culices do, they keep the 

 whole body and cephalic appendages nearly in one straight 

 line, obliquely, or it may be, almost vertically to the surface 

 on which they are resting, with the abdomen held up, and 

 the proboscis pointing at the surface on which they rest, as 

 if they contemplated boring themselves into it. This attitude 

 is so characteristic that it affords a ready means of recog- 

 nising the genus, when found settled. In the case of A)i. 

 sinensis, An. Bossii, An. Jamesii, An. argyrotarsis, An. 

 alhipes, and also, to judge even from Sambon's own figures, 

 in those of An. superpictus and An. niaculipennis , there can 

 be no doubt that the habitual resting attitude is such as has 

 been described ; but I do not for a moment suppose that it 

 can be taken as an absolute rule for all species, either of 

 Anopheles or Culex ; and just before I left India I met with 

 a new species of Anopheles which entirely deviated from the 

 common rule in this respect, as every one of some dozen 

 living specimens of both sexes was found resting in a position 

 exactly such as is regarded as characteristic of Culex. The 

 resemblance is further aided by the fact that in the fresh 

 state the abdomen is conspicuously banded in a manner 

 most exceptional in the genus, so that when I arrived in the 

 rest-house in which I found them, late one night, I was 

 completely taken in by the counterfeit, mistaking them for 



